Learning to Be A Little Less American: Collaboration vs Competition

Recently I gave a talk at a convention in which I urged my patient and polite audience to try to be a little less American by reducing their culturally taught inclination and preference for competition—and instead, to practice more collaboration. In tight economic times, and in the new normal of scarcer resources, of all kinds, we simply don’t have the luxury of competing in all the ways we have done so historically on our campuses. I went on to offer some suggestions for engaging in collaboration and I offer them here:

Let me share some strategies for collaboration:

Has to emerge from your basic values. You have to have a philosophy.

Ideally, you should have a written philosophy statement. And you should share it

And your unit needs both a mission and philosophy statement, in which value of collaboration is made explicit in the latter

You need an advisory group of stakeholders. But you must convene them, solicit their advice and take it, act on it. Just having this group and using it is a form of collaboration.

Need to assess impact of your work and share it publicly, particularly explaining what you did from what you learned and how other stakeholders helped increase your effectiveness. In this context you are reporting what it is that you did collaboratively that led to positive outcomes.

Ask who else, what other unit/program has similiar needs, student populations served? How do we currently work together or not? How do we make similar or different use of institutional resources?

What could we conceivably share, integrate?

What efficiencies could we accomplish? Better to self initiate these than to have them imposed upon you!

What am I doing that I don’t really need to be doing?

What do I know that some other unit is probably doing better than I am and if I gave something up I could better concentrate on my core mission and improve my effectiveness at that?

Do I really need all the resources I have? Are there some I could give back?

Ask how can I help individual X or unit Y be more effective in their mission? Serve yourself by serving others.

My own experience has taught me that a focus on critical student transitions during the college years are an ideal focus for partnerships: the entering transition (of which there may be at least three or more—the developmental student transition, the ESL student, then the matriculated student transition); then another kind of entering student—the transfer student; and the sophomore student, and the senior student. And what about the beginning graduate students? Note, a well kept secret: graduate student attrition is far higher than undergraduate student attrition and far more costly.

Recognize and act on awareness, understanding that student learning and success is result of complex interplay of many variables including the: academic, social, physical, emotional, spiritual. Point is that you don’t get number one, academic success, by focusing solely on academics. Get it by focusing on all of these “dimensions”. All of them support and facilitate academic success. This is why have to educate the whole student and only way to do that is with collaborative partnerships.

Practice the philosophy of one of my mentors: always make decisions as if you could live with consequences for rest of your career at that institution and in terms of what might be best for the institution’s greater good not necessarily the good of my unit.

Just think what difference it might have made if bankers and investment brokers who brought us the Great Recession had had the big picture of what was best for our country instead of just their corporate bottom lines and their bonuses.

The John N. Gardner Institute is a group of people that have an extremely high level of expertise in education. They know education - they don’t just know the software or a program - they know all the touch points needed to craft a good system that that is going to work for our students.— Stuart Benkert, Director of Complete College Tracking and Assessment, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

Working with the Gardner Institute provided a structure to look at institutional effectiveness. This structure was more encouraging, and less threatening, than evaluative agencies and brought people together from across the campus, all committed to the same task - new student success.— Mark Lange, Former FoE Liason - Holyoke Community College

The FoE process was transformational for MCCC. It helped us bring all stakeholders together and have a dialogue that has brought real changes to our institution. As we journey on, we are now very mindful and intentional in thinking about student success.— Dr. Steady Moono, Vice President for Student Affairs - Montgomery County Community College

This has been an incredible (and quick) endeavor and an eye-opener in many ways. What is most rewarding to me, at the moment, is to have so much information in one place and accessible to so many people. This takes us way beyond anecdotal conversations. THANK YOU…for helping us get our data uploaded, assembled, reloaded, corrected, and available to our users.— Regina Shearer, Associate Vice President for Student Success, Rivier University

We've been in the implementation process for a short time and have achieved great momentum. In a time of 'lean' operating, FoE is the perfect tool to help institutions achieve efficient and effective operating goals while adding value to the student experience.— Shawn A. Anderson, Dean of Student Services - Minnesota State Community and Technical College

The FoE self study helped us to identify initiatives that were working well, pin-point gaps in our services, and set goals for continuing to improve our efforts in meeting the needs of our students.— Amanda Yale, Associate Provost for Enrollment Services - Slippery Rock University

Based on my experiences with the Institute, I can assert with assurance that FoE is a highly structured but very flexible process that has 'evolution' as its signature characteristic. An institution that participates in FoE exemplifies what Peter Senge calls "a learning institution."— Roberta Matthews, Former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs - Brooklyn College

The John N. Gardner Institute has provided us an opportunity to really have candid conversations, as well as connect with other like-minded schools and senior staff. Student success is extremely important to our institution. With JNGI, you really get the idea of how we are all on the right path.— Sasha Heard, Student Affairs Manager, Allied American University

Our FoE Philosophy Statement served as the basis for the development of our Quality Enhancement Plan for SACS and for the improvements we have made to new student orientation, advising, and retention.— Debbi Clear, Vice President of Instruction & Student Services - Virginia Highlands Community College

We maximized our efforts by linking FoE with the Higher Learning Commission's AQIP system for accreditation. Through this link, efforts related to the first year had instant cross-functional commitment and were viewed through a continuous improvement lens.— Ali O'Brien, Asst. Vice President for Educational Affairs - College of Lake County

I am proud to say that our work is still going on almost four years later, and the focus on what is most important, the student, is still a large part of our planning for new programs and curriculum redesign.— Amy Baldwin, Instructor of English - Pulaski Technical College